Thursday, February 15, 2007

Only half the story - Democratic presidents violated the Constitution also

One group who wishes to impeach George W. Bush, the Project for a New American Revolution, cites the whole declaration of war thingie as a reach to impeach Bush.

The clearest case for the impeachment of the President is his failure to keep his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution by invading Afghanistan and Iraq without a formal declaration of war. That Congress voted to assign their power to declare war to the President should be no bar to impeachment as such an assignment is not valid.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution plainly places the power to declare war with Congress. The Constitution makes no provisions regarding the assignment of the enumerated powers of Congress to another branch of the government.

George Washington said, "The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure."


All right and fine, except that everyone who was in Congress in 2002 would need to be impeached for the same reason, and the same grounds could have been used to impeach just about every president since Harry S Truman, as well as several earlier presidents such as Abraham Lincoln (technically, the Civil War was unconstitutional, since it didn't have a declaration as noted previously).

declarewar

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